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Best Hiking Shoes for Wide Flat and Narrow Feet

Hiking is constantly growing in popularity and according to recent studies that you can check out here the numbers have actually grown by 30% for the past 8 years. The data shows that over 38 million people have gone hiking or backpacking only in the first few months of 2016. This only shows that manufacturers of hiking shoes and shoes have a steadily growing demand for their products. A 30% increase over the past 8 years is a significant amount and if these numbers are put into perspective and only 5% of these 38 million are just getting into the sport of backpacking and hiking, this means that with an average pair of 150$ that’s a 300 million dollar industry right there. Well although there are amazing brands that produce fantastic hiking shoes, we see more and more people complaining that there aren’t models that fit their wide or narrow feet. It’s normal to look for a pair that would fit nicely when we’re spending over 100$ a pair, but it’s even more understandable that people would look for something that fits well when they’ll be spending hours every day walking with these shoes on all types of terrain. Comfy and supportive hiking boots are a must if you want to have a pleasant experience and if your feet are narrow or wide the selection of good hiking shoes might be a little slimmer, but unlike the past, there are models that cater to such clients nowadays.

Although Narrow feet are not that common like wide feet, manufacturers that are big have listened to their customers and finally answered the prayers of many people around that experience either of these two kinds of feet. Although we would have expected that the change would start with some of the big names in the industry it was the smaller companies that decided to take action first. They found a niche that was there for the taking and just how big of a niche that was?

Well with one in 5 people having either narrow, flat or wide feet there seems to be an enormous amount of people that weren’t getting what they needed. Well not anymore as not only small brands, but the big names offering a wide variety of shoes to cater to such clients.

Hiking problems related to narrow feet

Narrow feet are a serious problem if you like hiking as it could cause heel slipping for example. If your shoes don’t properly fit there are injuries that you would probably have to deal with as an aftermath. There is a lot of information on how to try and solve the issue if you already have hiking shoes that don’t fit your narrow feet there might be a couple of things you could do to make them a bit more comfortable. For instance, there are a few lacing techniques that you could try or you could add a good insole to make the shoes fit a little better and help snuggle your feet to the shoes .

Hiking problems related to Wide feet

Wide feet are actually even more common than narrow feet and the problem related to them is that your feet simply won’t be able to fit (at least not comfortably). That might make you walk in a way that is unnatural, which will put more pressure on your ligaments, which will inevitably cause injuries in the long run. This is obviously unacceptable if you’re hiking a long trail such as the Appalachian trail as it will prevent you from doing this once in a lifetime journey that in our humble opinion everyone (at least people from the East Coast) should experience.

Finding out what type of feet you have

To really know what type of shoes you need, it’s important to know what type of feet you have. Although you might think that you have normal feet, which are neither wide or narrow, there are ways to determine their exact type. The way to determine whether or not you have wide feet is quite simple and can be explained in a few simple steps.

First off, you need to measure both your feet at the widest point and write down the measurements of the wider one

Then you subtract 1/8 of an inch from the number you had and that’s the size you should go by

Check whether you have wide or narrow feet on this table

To make measuring easier, it’s better to put on socks and simply draw their shape while you’re on a piece of paper. This makes measuring with a ruler significantly easier. Once you have this information you’ll determine the best choice for you easily.

Like we’ve previously talked in our review of the top brands of hiking boots there are some brands which actually offer wider and shoes even though that this isn’t necessarily noted by the manufacturer. You know that some brands’ sizes aren’t always correct and we’ve actually gathered some information regarding the hiking shoes that fit true to their size and the ones that run bigger or smaller. We have also rated different brands of hiking boots and shoes for you to easily determine which ones are going to last more for example.

To make things easier for you we’ve decided to list the brands of hiking boots that run wider than usual. Here’s that list:

Teva shoes run narrower than usual especially if you’re looking for water shoes or boots and Vasque offers hiking shoes for people with narrower feet. Asolo might be one of the best brands in terms of user ratings, but it’s true that their hiking boots run a little narrow and if you haven’t tried the boots before buying you might have a problem if you have wide feet. If you’re looking for mountaineering boots which is definitely not the same as hiking boots (no matter what the guy at the store tells you), your best bet for boots that will fit your narrow feet is probably gonna be La Sportiva or Merrell in some instances.

Best hiking boots for narrow feet

In order to narrow down your choice of hiking boots for narrow feet we’ve compiled a list of 5 models that would do a good job for you without actually having to buy separate insoles to help stabilize your feet inside.

The list consists of models from different brands and that’s mainly because some people would prefer the design of one boots to the design of others. The ratings are given depending on how good the hiking boots are for narrow feet, so we’ve started with the ones that will offer best support and we’ve gone down to the ones with the least support and worst fit. Keep in mind that none of these hiking boots for narrow feet aren’t bad and each one of the models will be a good choice, but some models are simply better and that’s why we’ve decided to rate them this way.

Which are the top hiking boots for people with wide feet

Wide feet aren’t so wide spread (no pun intended) as narrow feet, but it’s a problem for people nonetheless. There are different descriptions of wide feet, but in the opinion of our team, anyone who has trouble fitting into regular shoes of any kind, not only the hiking boots that we’re talking about in this post, has wide feet. If your feet hurt after a while and you feel like the shoes or boots you’re wearing are squeezing your foot evertighter, then you probably need hiking boots for wide feet. There are actually two types of wide feet, one of which is when your foot is wide where the toes end and the rest of your foot begins and the other type is when your toes are really wide apart and that’s the widest part of your foot. There are actually different types of hiking boots for these two types of wide feet, but we’ll get to them in a minute. In order to make things a little clearer we’ve decided to show a few pictures of wide feet of both types.

Hiking boots for people with flat feet

Flat feet or (per flato) is a common problem amongs both men and women and although footwear manufacturers have been working a lot towards serving said people with enough options, the hiking industry and hiking boots in particular have been lacking a ton of options to choose from. If you like trail walking and shoes or boots which are pleasa